Listening to what experts predict is a great way to get a feeling for the changes happening in the industry but the problem with most prediction posts is that they are limited to the writers opinion.

In this post I will predict the key inbound changes for 2016, not by offering my opinion, but by using Google Trend data.

Inbound

2016 is going to be the year of inbound. Companies are dropping interruptive marketing like a hot potato because the effectiveness is going down and costs are going up. Take a look at the data...

For as long as Google trends has been gathering data people have been indepently working on elements of inbound...

But only in 2008 did people start bringing this together in a holistic strategy and calling it inbound marketing...

This will be the year when more companies bring their digital marketing together and get better results.

Let's have a look at SEO, one of the key elements of inbound and predict how it will change in 2016...

SEO

People are turning to content marketing ahead of old school link building. This is because content marketing can get links as well as build your brand and convert users. Unlike old school link building content marketing is a safe strategy for increasing the authority of your website...

For on-site improvements the focus is switching to the user, instead of trying to game search engines (with tactics such as keyword density)...

Finally, let's look at the platforms people will be using to manage their inbound channels...

Platforms

Most inbound marketing platforms are growing due to the rise in inbound but as you can see from the trend data below one company stands apart in size and growth; Hubspot (we use Hubspot ourselves and it's the one we recommend to clients)...

So that it's, 6 key insights into inbound in 2016 with the data to back it up!

If you want 2016 to be the year inbound really works for you start by reading this...